boyfriend, family, temple housing, & 28 days and counting

Now we are past the one month mark. Part of me asks "Am I REALLY going to Japan and not coming back for a year???" After all the hard work, is this a reality? I'm excited to go, but it's just so hard to believe that I am actually going...

As my time in America is becoming shorter, i think of meeting or spending time with my friends and family for the last time in a long while. My mother and me took a spontanious vacation to Montery, having a girls time sipping cocktails in the hotel lounge, walking on the beach, building a mermaid with seaweed hair, and going on a shopping spree at the Gilroy outlets. It sort of feels like my birthday, with my mother buying me tons of clothes and not saying "Choose one or the other, but you can't have both."

She is spending so much on me, I wonder if it is too much. I guess I am used to the attitude "If you want it, you have to pay for it." I usually pay for any new clothes I want, my bills like my car insurance and cell phone, or my contacts. But she is buying me a ton of clothes and even paid for my contacts. She even sold her old catering equipment and put the money into my fund for Japan O.O My mother's generiosity and support of my expensive ambitious is amazing. I am very thankful and glad for her.

I also have begun feel the pangs of lovesickness u.u My boyfriend took a trip to New York for the weekend while i went with my mother. I am always leaving for trips for a few days and leaving him behind... I am caught up in my event while he is left sit and think of how soon i will come back. But didn't understand how he felt until now. The moment i come home from my trip i want to go to his house and see him - but he's not there.

Is this the pain of long distance love that i face while in Japan?

*SIGH*...
(>:-<) But I am strong! I can take it! がんばります！


On another note, my International Programs office called me this week to offer me alternate housing in Japan as a sort of scholarship. They wanted to know if i wanted to live in a temple rent-free for my year abroad.

A temple O.O

I would live in a one-room, furnished apartment in a 4 story complex on the grounds of a temple. I would have to cook for myself in a shared kitchen on the 4th floor and the bathroom was shared. I also would have to sweep some of the temple grounds and dust and vaccum a room of the temple.

...would i be Kagome from Inuyasha??

But I also heard that this was really independant living without much interaction from the students or the temple people. I really want to have daily interaction and have to communicate with other Japanese. It is really nessecary for me to improve. Also, I'm hoping for a nice Japanese mother who will cook me delicious Japanese food ^_^ And if you know me and how long it takes me to get around to cleaning my own bathroom (like a week after my mom says "Clean your bathroom!!!" hahah.....) let alone someone else's cleaning...... So i turned the offer down.

It would be nice to know what my housing situation will be (i don't know yet...) but i don't mind.

Well, back to cleaning my room and putting away all my new clothes ^_^ Till, next time....

28 days and counting..........